That concludes our coverage of today's meeting, chaired by the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner, Simon Foster.

He asked a series of questions about the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from a match against Aston Villa in November.

Acting Chief Constable Scott Green and his deputy Jennifer Mattinson responded to them and repeated the force's apology for the failings in that decision.

There were some questions they said they could not respond to, because of an ongoing Independent Office for Police Conduct investigation into the actions taken by individual officers.

But they said they intended to make changes to procedure and to rebuild trust with the Jewish community.

The police and crime commissioner has concluded with his own remarks and started by stating: "This must never happen again."

Simon Foster said his team would work to "identify all matters arising" and would follow up on reports from the Home Affairs Committee and His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, which are due in February and the summer respectively.

He said he would also work with the force to rebuild confidence in the force.

Finally, he addressed the decision of Chief Constable Craig Guildford to retire.

Some had called for him to be sacked instead.

But he reminded people he did not have the power to block that retirement and that he did not have the power to sack a chief constable on the spot.

On Monday, in a plan to shake-up policing in England and Wales, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood - who previously told the BBC she would have sacked Guildford over the issue - confirmed that the power to sack chief constables would return to her office.

Phil Mackie

Michael Rowe, the chairman of the Young National Jewish Assembly, said he attended Tuesday's meeting with Scott Green.

"I was pleased that the new acting chief constable met with the Jewish community last week to apologise for the series of serious failings which resulted in the Maccabi fans being banned from our city," he said.

"While this was a positive first step, we now need to see concrete action from West Midlands Police to ensure that the Jewish community is not sidelined in the future and fans are not banned just because they're Jewish.

"The chief constable's decision to act on my suggestion of providing antisemitism training to all offers will go a long way to restoring trust with our community."

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has given us more details today about its investigation.

IOPC Director Derrick Campbell, said: “Having thoroughly assessed the information provided to us by the police and crime commissioner, we have decided to independently investigate the conduct of Craig Guildford over his involvement in the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans. We will look in detail at the role Mr Guildford played. “We are also independently investigating to determine if any West Midlands Police officers or staff may have a case to answer for misconduct.

"That will examine all the information and intelligence provided to the Safety Advisory Group, who was involved in the preparation of briefings and the intel report, how information was obtained, including any use of AI, and what accuracy checks were in place.”

A reminder, at times in this meeting the Acting Chief Constable has said he cannot comment on some questions from commissioner Simon Foster, in case he risks prejudicing the IOPC investigation.

Simon Foster has begun wrapping the meeting up and gave Scott Green the chance to say a few final words.

Green said he recognised the HMIC report into the Maccabi operation had been "damning" and repeated his apology for the mistakes made by his force.

He also said he recognised the impact it had had on trust in his force and relationships with the Jewish community.

He said changes would be made and that work would be carried out to rebuild that trust - something he said he would take personal responsibility for.

Simon Foster has asked the Acting Chief Constable for a commitment that he as the police commissioner will be kept fully informed of decision making in the future.

Scott Green told the meeting that he has been in post for seven days and had already met Foster five times, with a commitment to meet at least once a week.

Phil Mackie

Scott Green spoke more about those meetings with representatives of the local and wider Jewish community last week as part of Operation Strive.

He said he apologised for the failings made during Operation Parkmill , the name the force gave to the policing of November's match, and praised the "candour, honesty and bravery" of the people he met.

He reiterated that, despite the errors made in the force's intelligence before the Maccabi game, that it was 'performing really well" under a range of different metrics.

Phil Mackie

Acting Chief Constable Scott Green has told the meeting he met the local Jewish community on Tuesday.

He said it was part of West Midlands Police's Operation Strive, which includes the promise to investigate every report of antisemitic hate crime.

Green said he apologised for their failures around the Maccabi match at the meeting on Tuesday and that there was some positive feedback after the meeting.

Acting Chief Constable Scott Green was asked how much damage had been done to community relations by the affair.

Green said: "We have damaged our relations with a number of communities, in particular the Jewish community."

He said his force would "work tirelessly" to put that right.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the non-attendance of Maccabi fans made the cost of the policing of the Aston Villa fixture a lot cheaper.

But we now have a clearer understanding of the difference.

It had been estimated the policing of the match could have cost more than £5m, if 2,500 away fans had attended.

Today, we have been told the cost of the policing without the Maccabi fans which ended up being closer to £1m.

Irrespective of any decision on the attendance of the Maccabi fans, Scott Green has told the meeting the match against Aston Villa would have been recorded as "high risk".

He said that assessment came from a "well known, tried and tested matrix".

The PCC has asked Scott Green about the intervention of government ministers and the prime minister, ahead of the match.

They had questioned the decision to ban the Maccabi fans and Green was asked if the force had become defensive as a result of the political pressure.

Green did not address that point directly but said "the totality of the West Midlands Police approach has failings in it".

"There are things organisationally that we got wrong," he said and he promised the force was "absolutely determined that we will learn from them".

We have gone back to the issue of AI in intelligence gathering by the force.

They have already said the use of the AI tool Microsoft Copilot would be suspended, after it threw up reports of a match involving Maccabi Tel Aviv which never took place.

Scott Green said it would still be used in the future, but the force needed policy and guidelines in place before it was.

Acting Chief Constable Scott Green has been asked why West Midlands Police only spoke to Dutch police and not other police in other countries, including Israel.

Green said he accepted more should have been done.

He said in future the force would be contacting "all European enforcement agencies".

Following up on that last point about the meeting with the Dutch police, Green said: "Organisationally, our record-keeping is not where it needs to be."

The PCC has now turned his attention to a meeting which took place between West Midlands Police and their counterparts in the Netherlands on 1 October.

West Midlands Police were looking for advice following a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax in 2024.

Simon Foster said he had concerns that the meeting, which took place online, was not recorded and that a handwritten account of the meeting was thrown away after an email summary was sent.

Foster said this meeting had been a "tipping point" , because the working assumption before this point had been that away fans should attend.

After the meeting that changed and the assumption became that away fans should not.

Acting Deputy Chief Constable Jennifer Mattinson has responded to this point.

She said it was not usual practice to record those meetings for European fixtures but it was "regrettable" the meeting had not been recorded on this occasion.

She said they would be recorded in the future.

"Much better record-keeping" was needed, she said.

The Acting Chief Constable has accepted a number of times now that there needed to be better engagement with local communities in Birmingham.

He also said he believed the West Midlands force, which polices about three million people, was "performing really well".

But he added that, while there were "really robust" intelligence structures, the "link between public order policing and our intelligence systems is not working properly".

That needed to improve, he said.

Scott Green has now been asked about the HMIC finding there was "confirmation bias" in the police's decision - in other words that they found evidence to match their beliefs.

He was asked what would change at a systemic level.

Green said he accepted there had been overstating of the evidence.

Scott Green has accepted the findings of a report by His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) which looked into the failings by West Midlands Police.

Among its conclusion was a finding that antisemitism played no part in the decision-making.

In documents released ahead of this meeting, the force admitted "we did not engage early enough with the local Jewish community".

Green said he acknowledged "the impact of our actions has really damaged those relations".

Earlier, Acting Deputy Chief Constable Jennifer Mattinson said the force would be rolling out antisemitism training for its officers.

Phil Mackie

It has been a frustrating start to the hearing for anyone expecting great revelations about how decisions were made.

Each time the PCC has asked a direct question about some of the more controversial allegations surrounding the game, the Acting Chief Constable has said he cannot comment in case he risks prejudicing the ongoing Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) investigation (referenced in an earlier post) into what happened

Simon Foster is starting his questioning of Acting Chief Constable Scott Green now and is going through the entire decision-making process, from the start.

Foster said there it was clear "an elaborate command structure was established" but despite that "the system fails".